During an interview with Hawaii News Now on Thursday, Rep. Ed Case (D-HI) stated that despite efforts by federal, state, and local officials, disaster relief still isn’t close enough to victims of the fires in Hawaii and cited the location of FEMA’s disaster recovery center in a location in Central Maui people can’t reach. Case said that FEMA is committed to getting a center in West Maui and he thinks they’ll do so.
Case said, “I do believe that there has been enough attempt at outreach. I think that there are some pockets out there that still are not getting the full word, and that’s a responsibility of everybody, that resources are out there, the communications are out there. FEMA and the state government and county government are working very hard to make sure that these communications, these services are much closer to the community itself. I think that’s really key here, because, right now, for example, FEMA’s disaster recovery center is over in Wailuku in Kahului and I talked with the administrator about hey, that’s got to be in West Maui itself, because people don’t want to go to Central Maui, and they can’t. It’s difficult for them. They don’t have a car. And it’s hard to get there. And so, the more that we can get these actual services into West Maui itself, and that’s what she has committed to doing, and I think that’s what they’re going to do. So, I think that this last challenge of getting the word fully out of what — about what’s available, and, by the way, dispelling inaccurate rumors out there about what FEMA does and doesn’t do.”
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